Kayleigh wasn't overly thrilled with our trip to Fort Wool. She enjoyed the boat ride over but declared the actual fort "sce-ee." (That's Kayleigh for scarey. LOL) She discovered the word scarey recently, how I don't know, and uses it frequently. Too frequently. You never know what's going to get the label. LOL

At anyrate, she would not allow her feet to touch the ground while we were at the fort. She did let me sit her on rocks and such so I could have brief reprieve from her weight.

Friday, September 25, 2009

It was an interesting week here. Actual school stopped on Tuesday. Gasp!

Monday and Tuesday went as planned. Yay!

We had a field trip to Fort Wool on Wednesday. You can read a bit about the fort here, if you're interested. I'll have some pictures at the end.

I had, foolishly, thought that we'd get school done afterward but Kayleigh slept for 20 minutes in the car and wouldn't go back down for a real nap. She was in a foul mood for the rest of the day. School was cancelled and we just hoped to survive.

On Thursday, we wound up spending the day buying clothes and shoes for the fall/winter. We've been having some cool weather lately so it was much needed.

Today we went to Disney on Ice and to lunch with friends. I declared the rest of the afternoon a "teacher work day" and we cleaned the house. It was not looking good. It's better but we're not done yet.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

We had a lot of errands this week but we managed to fit in a few Tot School activities.

The peg stacker was the big hit of the week. She played with it every day.

Our only craft this week was a last minute addition. I had found some foam farm stickers at the Dollar General. You can't go wrong for only a $1. She also colored on her paper with crayons and markers. She was very interested in her name. She tried to copy mommy buy "tracing" her name with the pink crayon too.

We ended our week with a fun trip to Busch Gardens. We had perfect weather and no lines!

Saturday, September 19, 2009

It was a busy week for us. Besides our normally scheduled activities we had a lot of errand running, a baby storytime and a trip to Busch Gardens. Thankfully we managed to get it all in.

Bible:

We finished up our Stick Figuring Through the Bible timeline. Mackenzie was a little apprehensive with the brief bit we did on the tribulation. We discussed at bit and agreed that we'll answer even more of her questions when we study it more in-depth.

Math:

Mackenzie was working on her x 5's. Now the fives are generally pretty easy, just skip counting by 5's. Well trust Mr. Demme to figure out an even faster way. And not only was his method faster, it was incredibly interesting. I'm learning as much math from Math-U-See as Mackenzie is.

Social Studies:

This week we were studying the Incas. We were happy that they were not as much into human sacrifices as the Aztecs were. Mackenzie was very impressed with their communication system and their road ways. She called them "clever." LOL And she even noticed that the Incans worshipped the sun just like the Aztecs. On her own! It's always goood to know she's listening.

We finished up The Secret of the Andes which tied in nicely with our Inca study. Several times Mackenzie made connections from what we read in our "text" with what was going on in the book. "So that's why Chuto always..." Very cool!

She also did another pocket in her Native American History Pocket. We were reading about the Seminoles in The American Indian Prayer Guide this week so we made our Seminole pocket. Mackenzie thought she might like to wear lots of beaded necklaces too but maybe not so many as the Seminole women do. LOL

Language Arts:

We continued working on adjectives and Mackenzie learned how to diagram sentences with adjectives. She also started memorizing a new poem, the name of which escapes me, and has The Land of Nod down.

Extras:

We started our Spanish this week with La Clasa Diverte. It went well. Some of the video/cd work is a little cheesy but she enjoys it. We're going to be doing the biweekly cooking/craft activities with our friends so that will be fun.

We had soccer game #2. Which we lost. =o( They did pretty good considering that they were a few players short and they all had to play the whole game. I thought Mackenzie might get upset over losing to her best friend, who's a bit flighty when it comes to sports, but she was fine with it. That made me very proud.

We finished our week with a fun trip to Busch Gardens with friends. I love it when the public schools start back up so we don't have to wait in any lines. =o)

Sunday, September 13, 2009

It's time for our Weekly Wrap-Up sponsored by Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Our week was good! We figured out some things that what were confusing us, read some great books, learned some interesting facts, and survived the first soccer game of the season.

Bible:

Thanks to some helpful bloggers, we figured out how to get started on Grapevine Study's Stick Figuring Through the Bible. Mackenzie is LOVING it! She thinks it's the most fun ever! That's always a great way to feel about your Bible lesson. We're just working through the time for the first two weeks, so we're continuing with our Sonlight Bible as they wrote it.

I think, however, once we start the more detailed Grapevine lesson that something will have to give. My plan is to use the Grapevine lesson as our main lesson and she'll continue with her Sonlight Bible readings . We'll be dropping the teacher-led Sonlight readings. We're using the New Testament Grapevine Study and that seems to be what Sonlight's teacher-led lessons were covering too, so it will work out nicely. We might just have a few early repeats.

Math:

We're working on multiplying by 10's this week. That was a piece of cake for Mackenzie. I'm anxious to get into the harder multiplication facts because Math-U-See always has really neat methods for helping the students master facts. They generally make me laugh and wonder why I never thought of that. LOL

Language Arts:

We're still reading The Secret of the Andes for our read aloud. We're really enjoying that fact that the read alouds this year, coincide with what we're studying in history. Mackenzie has even noticed. LOL

Mackenzie's reader was A Lion to Guard Us. She like it so much she finished it early.

In grammar we were studying adjectives. Even I learned something new, sort of. I found it interesting that an apostrophe can turn a noun into an adjective. I've always known how to use an apostrophe but I never thought about them changing a word into a different part of speech.

Mackenzie is also working on memorizing the poem The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson. She pretty much has it down, it just needs a little polishing.

Science:

We are continuing to study the body in science. We focused on things pertaining to the lungs and breathing. For our animal study we learned about zebras and bush babies. Bush babies are just so cute!!!

Social Studies:

We are now studying the Aztecs. We are reading Incans, Aztecs and Mayans. The book is pretty blunt about how the tribes lived, so I was a tad concerned about whether or not it would be too much for Mackenzie. She was properly horrified with the "ugly" parts but didn't dwell on them. I'm pretty certain that, if asked, she'd tell you the most interesting thing that she learned was how the Aztec matchmakers carried the brides to the grooms house. She thought that was hysterical.

Extras:

We still need to add in our art and Spanish. I've been scheduling art twice a week but we haven't gotten to it. Spanish we haven't added at all yet. I think we'll start that next week.

We had our first soccer game of the season and we got creamed. We were playing the best team in the league, so we weren't too surprised. But the kids did manage to score two goals on them so we call that a major victory.

I got lots of great pictures of the game. 643 to be exact. Don't worry! I'm not posting them all. LOL

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Well our third week of Tot School is behind us. While we didn't finishe all of our "planned" activities, we had lots of fun. We continued our farm theme and worked on our shapes and colors. Kayleigh's attention span was very short this week. She must have cabin fever because of all the rain that kept us in the house.